


obscurity and agony

by summerdayghost



Category: Dead Ringers (1988)
Genre: Borderline Necrophilia, Brother/Brother Incest, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Fantasizing, First Kiss, M/M, Murder-Suicide, Twincest, Unconsummated Desire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:33:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25638829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summerdayghost/pseuds/summerdayghost
Summary: If not happy, then content.
Relationships: Beverly Mantle/Elliot Mantle
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	obscurity and agony

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scorpiod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/gifts).



It would be incorrect to say that Ellie spent the first three minutes of his life in pain even if he was yet to be completed. The start of his life was pretty average. He was submerged in a sphere of new sensation. Being overwhelmed was a form of suffering in its own, but it was not a real ache. While his nerves were screaming, it was in confusion, not danger. Some said there was no such thing as real pain, that it was all imagined, but Ellie thought people who genuinely believed that must not have known much at all. The burn that came with loss was far from fictitious.

So no, Ellie was not in any pain when he was born, yet memory was a form of distortion. Once a moment passed it was gone forever. Remembering a moment as it truly had been was impossible for the act of remembrance in itself changed it. Perhaps it was better to forget things then, for purity could only be found in obscurity.

He did not remember his birth. Of fucking course he did not remember his birth. Ellie was many things but a mutant was not one of them. However he understood what his birth had been like from a factual perspective, and the mere concept of a time before Bev, a time without Bev was so agonizing that there was a trauma connected to it nevertheless. The biggest difference between himself and Bev, other than the few millimeters of height, Ellie liked to think, was that Bev was missing the scars Ellie retained on his soul from this ordeal.

Repeating such an excruciating experience was Ellie’s only real fear. Everything else he could handle, but losing Bev would be worse than losing himself. Or maybe it would be the exact same thing. He just knew that ownership was a large part of what kept him going, and if he did not have his baby brother, then he did not have anything. If his baby brother did not have him, then he did not have anything.

The old romantics’ riddle, what would be worse, dying first knowing that there would be a version of the one you loved your eyes would never see or living beyond the death of the one for whom you lived for in the first place, had never been much of a puzzle for Ellie. He knew his answer before he ever encountered the question. Ideally the two of them would be struck down together, but as that was unrealistic Ellie wanted to go first. It was selfish, but never having to live in a world without him was perhaps the only luxury he wanted to deny Bev. Ellie had already had to do it once, and doing it twice would have been unfair.

Besides death would not have been that much of a separation. No separation at all really. If anything it would bring them closer. By the time of their reunion they would finally be truly identical in that Bev would have the same scars on his soul as Ellie. This reunion would be a swift one as well. Ellie knew that because well, he knew Bev better than he could know himself. Neither of them could make it without the other.

When all of that was taken into account even if it was unclear to Bev if Ellie genuinely understood what was happening (and if that was unclear to Bev then it was probably unclear to Ellie as well, then again, it was unclear to Bev if Bev understood what was happening), Ellie died happy. If not happy, then at least content. The terror of his nightmares— no, wait, Bev was the one who got nightmares, but hey. What did it matter anyway? If Ellie had nightmares they would have been about watching Bev die, the light leaving his eyes. Ellie’s worst anxiety never came to pass.

Ellie moved far too slowly with Bev. Call it gluttony or call it denial, but when it came to this section of his life, the most important one, he indulged in the things he already had. This did not allow him to have everything he wanted, but it gave him everything he needed. That should have been enough.

Starting with his baby brother’s very first time (something he was responsible for which continued to bring him a strange thrill) Ellie demanded every detail of Bev’s sex life. He was fascinated by every word, and was disappointed when he thought there were not enough of them, that Bev did not say enough, did not talk long enough.

It was primarily about sharing, but Ellie also used this time to learn. He now knew what it would be like if the bed they shared found a more prurient purpose. Sensitivity and creativity drove Bev through much of his life, this was what made him so dangerous, and this included in lovemaking. Bev would worship Ellie’s body.

Maybe Bev would have tied him up or held him down. Or maybe the only restraints binding Ellie would have been the softest of caresses. He had never been penetrated before, and he assumed it would hurt, but Ellie would let Bev do anything to his body, even rip it to shreds. There was no need to worry about the pain. The way Bev would have showered him with attention would have more than compensated for it.

Being the entirety of Bev’s world would have been impractical in life. Such a thing was only possible in death, the ultimate destroyer of responsibility. Even so the idea alone without the usual much appreciated assistance of lurid imagery was enough to bring Ellie to orgasm. Thoughts of this sort brought comfort on many awkward college nights, cock twitching in his hand when he could not tell if Bev was watching him or sleeping. The veneration Bev would have showed Ellie while fucking him would have been perfect for pretending this notion was not just unlivable fantasy.

Of course Bev’s stories never provided the foundation for when Ellie wanted to flip the script. As marvelous as these tales were to hear they could not do everything. Ellie was forced to use his own imagination.

In Ellie’s mind Bev would be timid in this context, and Ellie would have to be careful starting out. However, Bev would trust him enough to let him push forward, push his whole length inside. Ellie would prove this faith well founded. Oh, he would make Bev shake and cry out with pleasure. He would give Bev too much, too much, oh god, too much, but that would be okay because Bev would always be left wanting more, more, more. No one could take care of Bev like Ellie could in the same way no one could take care of Ellie like Bev could.

Despite the jealous monster that creeped in his torso threatening to climb up and claw out through his eyes from time to time, Ellie was happy to get this much. If not happy, then at least content. Bev was fragile at his core. Ellie worried anything too bold would have shattered him. Whether those concerns were fully warranted in the end was anybody’s guess.

Both of them purposely blinded themselves to it, but perhaps a different way of things would have saved them. Okay, maybe salvation was impossible for them in the truest sense of the term, but there was a chance they might not have ended up so thoroughly destroyed.

They could have really been something. Something beautiful, something nice. If they had stopped trying with other people, stopped trying with women, and just resolved to find satisfaction in one another. Or to put it in a less tactful, roundabout way, and get right to the point, if they had decided to fuck each other exclusively.

In hindsight what they did to those women was a dreadful thing. Now, Ellie did not feel remorse for the broken hearts they’d left behind. He would break them all again, maybe even going as far as to crush them under his heel and devour what remained this time, without blinking an eye. This regret was not born out of newfound compassion, but grief over the wedge the arrangement eventually created and what that divide brought with it. If Ellie had the chance to do it all over again he would put an end to that routine much sooner, long before they got to the actress, just to spare them the torment.

The two of them would have made a lovely couple. It would have allowed them to intertwine their souls every bit as much as they craved without complication. No justifications, no excuses, no contrivances, just the simplicity of that fact that they were together. They would have become one while remaining two.

Their colleagues and clients probably would not have liked it, but if anyone could do discretion it was them. Not much about their outward dynamic would have been altered. They would still switch names situationally, if anything the names would have become interchangeable objects rather than distinct signifiers. And if they were suspicious, they could count on people to look the other way for the sake of genius. Was that not what always happened?

Sure, they would not get to do the things that normal happy couples were supposed to like flaunt their love in public or get legally married or have children, but none of those things mattered. Not to them. Not when they had so much more than everyone else.

Although the last one on the list might have been theoretically possible.

One of them could conceivably have adopted with the other serving as an uncle on paper but a second father in practice. They had money and grand reputations. Someone, somewhere would be willing to give them babies. Twins because anything else, something singular and decayed, seemed like a horrendously cruel existence, and their daughters deserved only the best. Girls because that’s what they understood on a textbook level. They would have boyish names (that question Claire asked struck a nerve because there really was something to it), and they would probably end up as close to each other as their fathers did. They would grow up to be perfect and grateful and go on to do amazing things because Bev and Elliot did a fantastic job because the girls were not real, they were only just concepts conjured up for the sale of vanity. Why would they turn out any other way? How the fuck could they be flawed?

There would have been honesty and beauty between Bev and Ellie. No problems at all as they faded into the sunset. Even though they would have remained the exact same people with all the same thrashing neurosis just under the skin that would not have mattered because— because. Because it wouldn’t have, okay. It just wouldn’t have.

None of this would ever come to pass. They had their first kiss far too late. The CPR did not count, and even if it did, it occured on the cusp where their fate very well might have already been sealed.

When their first kiss should have been was unclear. A million moments from over the years stood out appearing as if they were engineered by the universe for this one specific purpose only to become missed opportunities instead. Any of them would have done just fine.

Maybe their first kiss should have been on a birthday. The symbolism of that worked out quite pleasingly. It would have been the beginning of something, a change.

Their birthday never passed without some cake, and that included the very last one. Cake was one of the best parts of the occasion. It would have been easy any of those times (except for the last one, the last one was far too different to imagine in the same category beyond the superficial) to just reach across the table and grab Bev by the face. He probably would have tasted frosting on his teeth and gotten crumbs in both of their mouths, but that would not have ruined the moment. If anything the mess would have been a part of the fairytale of it all.

Maybe their first kiss should have been one of those times during their teen years Ellie found Bev in the bathtub holding his breath submerged under the water. Ellie knew exactly what was running through Bev’s mind because whenever he found himself thinking about Bev incorrectly (read as: Bev moaning, Bev tight around him, Bev’s tongue on the underside of his cock) too much he did the same thing. Drowning was a safer way to internalize the water.

Ellie could have waited for Bev to come back up and pressed his lips softly against Bev’s as he reached down and stroked. The temptation would have overpowered the self-loathing (which in this context was the same as regular old revulsion towards another person) and Bev would have soon been begging for Ellie to undress. They would have rolled around together in the bathtub, slippery sometimes crashing their teeth against each other, learning what felt sublime.

Either way, their first kiss should not have happened when it did (assuming it even happened at all, Bev’s brain was little more than a mess of wires at the moment, fact and fabrication blurred and blended like the colors of an unobscured sunset of the sort he rarely ever saw, he spent so much of his time inside and it was so dreadfully claustrophobic, more so than he could ever be conscious of in the moment). Bev was struggling to further open and expose the contents of the cavity he had created in Ellie. Human flesh was a strange paradox of weakness and strength. Killing was harder as a physical act than it was as an emotional one. Killing was harder as an emotional act than it was as a physical one. The meat was laughably flimsy in many respects but resilient in only the most frustrating ways. He tore things out and threw them to the side covering his gloves with fresh red gore.

Every organ was a strange mix or familiar and strange. Ellie was far from a mutant. In fact, his insides deserved awards and bouquets of flowers. Bev had always thought there should be beauty contests for the insides of bodies. Or was it Ellie who had always thought that? Where Ellie’s ideas began and Bev’s ideas ended grew fuzzier in memory. The line in Bev’s mind resembled television static. He was filled with the awareness that his organs were likely the exact same. A faint blush spread at the idea that he could possess such inner radiance.

Suicide had not yet crossed Bev’s mind in a concrete manner, but as he carried out the separation procedure knew he wanted to be back together eventually. He wanted to be one again so much he cried on and off the whole time. The stuff flowing through his veins and pumping through his heart felt less like blood and more like love in a physical form. It was hurting him, he could feel it scream. Later he would quiet it by laying across Ellie’s lap, looking somewhat like a lost, devoted child desperately seeking comfort, never to get up again, but his first idea to merge them together involved the use of his lips.


End file.
